Wednesday, 15 August 2012

If I had not taken
that decision to switch from the liberal arts and social sciences to pure
science and mathematics in the second term of the penultimate year of my
secondary school education, I might well have become a lawyer with the career path
towards becoming a judge.

Nothing excites me
more than to read the conclusions of judges when delivering judgements on socially sensitive issues. The clarity of thought that is presented in the
simplicity of expression leaves no one in doubt as to the persuasion that
inspired their words.

I have worked with
lawyers before and any legal drama in television especially Perry Mason has
always caught my fascination.

Cultural parenting in Diaspora

Sadly, the cases I
will refer to in this blog pertain to parenting issues of immigrant communities
in the United Kingdom that need scrutiny and addressing. There have been too
many instances of cruelty towards children meted out in brutalisation passing
for discipline, honour killings to restore parental honour in their
communities, Female Genital Mutilation, witchcraft stigmatisation, bizarre and
macabre rituals, to mention just a few.

Parents who have
come within the crosshairs of the law have usually claimed racial prejudice and
a miscarriage of justice. They protest that they are innocent and though there
is nothing on God’s good earth that can justify their actions, the rights their
children may not have in their home countries in what we delusionally call 'our
culture' are all too well protected in the West.

Children have rights

The first lesson
any immigrant parent must learn by observation or through coercion is a child
in the West has rights and the State where those rights are found to have been
violated will prosecute the parents to the full extent of the law.

Whilst one can
understand the fears of parents who have in their own upbringing have been
given the big stick and very little carrot. I dare say, the emphasis is more on
size of carrot and when it is offered in the West – it can be more than just
effective, the relationship that stems from love rather than the duty of
parental provision – most Western kids are not unruly, ill-disciplined,
uncontrollable and disastrously beyond redemption.

You’re now in Rome

The narrative is
the same in many immigrant communities, the parents come from a country with
different cultures and practices to live in the West, they have their children
born and bred in the West, the children might be aware of their parents' heritage but they are essentially Westerners in mind, outlook, expression and
culture.

No amount of
community activity apart from the core environment of the home country is going
to turn those children into cultural carbon-copies of their parents. As they
say, when in Rome, do as Romans do.

Integrate or lose out

Again, one can
understand the comfort a sense of community provides people, but like I have
written many times before, these communities have a tendency to ghettoise to
the extent that they become time-capsules of practices from home countries that
probably have been jettisoned decades ago.

Parents who fail to
integrate properly in host countries are at risk of first running afoul of the
law leaving them unprepared for seriously dire consequences – brutalisation and murder leading
to long terms of imprisonment – all of which could have been completely
avoidable.

The honest truth is
those who fail to integrate end up not being able to cope with the cultural
clashes they face and they take out their frustrations on their usually
vulnerable children who are caught between the freer world beyond their doors
and the hell at their homes – it need not be so.

What horror!

In the case of the Nigerian
couple [1] jailed for brutalising their six children, it is a damning
indictment of parenthood to have a 9-year old write. “My mum is the worst mum ever
because she can’t cope with five of us, her broken hand and being pregnant. She
always leaves me out so I always starve and I am forced to work. If I don’t get
enough house work done, I am beaten without mercy with the wooden end of a
broom. I have scars all over me to prove it. I can’t stay here. I would like a
new mum.” Your heart just bleeds. I can honestly say, this is not Nigerian
culture, it is just wickedness.

However, the one
pertaining to Pakistani
parents who murdered [2] their daughter for thwarting their desire to put
her into a forced married in what is commonly known as an “honour killing” just
shows what many children could face in the West.

Just beyond reason

The Sentencing
Remarks [3 PDF] of Mr. Justice Roderick Evans in the case of R v Iftikar
Ahmed and Farzana Ahmed should be classic text for the reading of any parent
in an immigrant community – what reads as so particular here is as general as
you can have an assessment of issues of parenting in Diaspora.

The first question
he asks sets the tone for what follows. “What was it that brought you two – her
parents, the people who had given her life – to the point of killing her?”

Her father who
apparently had lived in the United Kingdom from the age of 10 probably suffered
what many multi-cultural kids suffer in being told that they are not this or
that enough. Having first married a Danish lady, had issue and even lived in
Denmark, there is no doubt that he had adopted Western customs and values until
he returned to Pakistan to marry a village girl who appeared to roll back his
years of Westernisation to the customs of rural Pakistan.

Pakistan in Warrington

The judge being
almost too perceptive for words continues – “You chose to bring up your family
in Warrington but, although you lived in Warrington, your social and cultural
attitudes were those of rural Pakistan and it was those which you imposed upon
your children.”

“Shafilea was a
determined, able and ambitious girl who wanted to live a life which was normal
in the country and in the town in which you had chosen to live and bring up
your children. However, you could not tolerate the life that Shafilea wanted to
live.”

The judge clearly
identifies with Shafilea here as what you would expect of a child; any child
regardless of parental heritage born and bred in the UK. The life she wanted to
life was normal for the town and country she lived in and that is where the conflicts
with a distant, unknown, strange and alien rural Pakistan of her parents knew
began.

“You wanted your family to live in Pakistan in Warrington. Although she
went to local schools, you objected to her socialising with girls from what has
been referred to as “the white community”. You objected to her wearing western
clothes and you objected to her having contact with boys.”

The short paragraph
above with what I have highlighted “Pakistan in Warrington” or “Nigeria in
Peckham” is a kinder reference to the immigrant ghettos that foist strange and stringent
adherence to alien community standards on the parents. The subtext here is that the United Kingdom is a white-majority country, you cannot bring your children up cocooned from that reality and culture.

Children need a reference point

“She was being squeezed between two cultures,
the culture and way of life that she saw around her and wanted to embrace and
the culture and way of life you wanted to impose upon her.” The children
sadly have no reference point for what the parents believe in.

“Your problem was that, in what you referred
to as your “community”, Shafilea’s conduct was bringing shame upon you and your
concern about being shamed in your community was greater than your love of you
(sic) child.”

Therein is the real
sad chapter of this heart-rending tale, the willingness of the parents to
sacrifice their child on the altar of a belief system or way of life that meant
more to them than the love for their child.

To have killed
their daughter in the presence of her siblings and successfully used that
terror to make them adhere and conform to what was literally an oath of silence
for over 7 years is as evil as any parent can get.

In conclusion

For them, I really
have no sympathy, there is much else the judge said that could be read in the
judgement but the points I want to make are clear.

Parenthood comes
with great responsibilities and along with that should be a good understanding
of the environment in which your children are growing up. For them to be
well-adjusted in their upbringing, it is important that the children recognise
in their parents what they also see about them.

Most crucially, the
children have rights, rights that will be defended to the utmost by the State;
that is part of what civilisation is about, giving everyone born into this
world a sense of dignity, pride and respect from the cradle to the grave.